Like most who come to the Mission, Rob has deep trauma in his past. Sadly, his trauma was born out of his desire to serve others and make a difference in this world. “I spent a long time in the Marine Corps, and I was a combat veteran,” he says. After Rob got out, he built a good life for himself — he found a job, got married, and had a daughter. But there was this hurt inside from all he had experienced that he couldn’t shake. “I didn’t realize that I was suffering from PTSD at that time.”

Rob began drinking, then turned to drugs to try to silence the pain and emptiness he felt. “I was trying to fill that God-sized hole with something,” he says. Nothing but God can truly heal that kind of trauma, that kind of pain. He lost everything. His house. His family. His job. Very quickly, things escalated, and he ended up on the streets with nothing but a backpack.

“I basically became homeless, and very quickly,” Rob says. “On about the fifth day, I just had to get something to eat. I was basically dying out there, and so I came to the Rescue Mission. I stayed on the line for two nights. I got some good sleep. I got to eat good food. I heard about the program.” Rob quickly regained his strength. When he was given the opportunity to join our 12-month Residential Recovery Program, he jumped at the chance. “It has given me a shot at life again, without the use of drugs and alcohol,” he says. “This is the happiest I’ve been in 30 years. It’s really ironic, isn’t it? It takes a rescue mission to rescue me.”